Page 46 of Omega’s Fold

From the porch I can see the truck. Matthew is in the passenger seat, belted in, school bag at his feet now. He has his arms folded across his chest and his jaw set, and the look on his small face is pure eight-year-old fury. He sees me looking. He doesn’t wave. He turns his head a fraction so he is staring at the dashboard instead, the back of his neck pink under the hair that needs cutting.

Donna gets in. The truck door slams. The engine starts.

He doesn’t look at me again.

The next days run together. Wyatt doesn’t come into the house.

Day Fourteen is a Saturday. I wake at four. I have slept maybe two hours. I lie on my back in Wyatt’s mother’s bed and watch the square of the window get brighter.

At five I get up, and carry the suitcase down one step at a time. I wipe the counter in the kitchen. I fold the cloth. I put the cloth over the tap where it belongs.

I don’t write a note. I thought about it most of last night. The yard is cold and the grass is sparkling with dew. The barn is a dark shape against a sky the color of the inside of a shell.

The big barn door stands open about a foot. The light is on inside. I can hear him moving.

I set the suitcase down by the porch and walk across the yard.

He is at the stall nearest the door with the gray mare, brush in one hand, running it down her shoulder in long slow strokes. He doesn’t stop when I come in. The shoulders of his jacket shift — one half-stroke — and then he goes back to brushing as if I’m not there.

I stop six feet away.

“The order was up at midnight,” I say. “I’m going.”

He brushes her shoulder.

“I wanted to say it in person. I didn’t want you to come in and find the suitcase gone.”

He brushes her flank.

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t know it was you when I designed the project. I found out on Day Three. I should have said then. I didn’t.”

He brushes down to her hock. He lifts the brush. He brushes down again. I count the strokes. On the seventh I understand he is going to do eight, and nine, and ten, and he is not going to turn around.

Okay.

Well, fuck you too, Briggs.

I turn around, retrieve my suitcase, get into the rental car and start the engine. I don’t look back.

13. Wyatt

I’m still not completely sure what has happened. Julian works for the Linden Group. Linden Group.

I’m sitting on a hay bale by the gray mare’s stall. The mare stands there with her head low, waiting for me to get up and brush her again. The barn smells of her and of straw but underneath that there is the lingering scent of the alpha I was beginning to believe was my soul mate.

Linden is the name on the trucks that come through the crossroads in the mornings. Linden is the name on the permits I’ve been reading about in the local paper for four years. Linden is the name that is destroying my well and is going to have me selling my cattle by end of year, if my calculations are right.

Julian works for Linden. And he didn’t tell me. If he had told me from the beginning, then that would be different, I’d have liked him less when I met him but it ultimately wouldn’t have changed everything.

He tried to talk to me and I know he thinks I’m giving him the silent treatment but I’m really not. I don’t know what to say. I can’t say it.

It feels as if my voice has been stolen. I don’t think I can physically talk to him, and if I could, I can only imagine screaming like a lunatic.

Like that’s going to help. The only dignity I have is in staying quiet and walking away.

I set the brush down on the bale beside me.

They could have brought him here on purpose. Linden’s big enough and old enough to have people in Bureau admin. They could have sent him up here to find out what I knew and soften me up and get me to sign. It would explain everything.